


Of Darkness and Spring

by baeconandeggs



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, M/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 07:56:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6946516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeconandeggs/pseuds/baeconandeggs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baekhyun met Chanyeol when the last had to take care of him after attempting suicide. It could be said they haven’t met in the best of circumstances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Darkness and Spring

**Author's Note:**

> This has been really hard to write, so I hope I’ve made an acceptable job of a difficult theme. Dear prompter, I really hope you like it :3 Also hi, A! After all, we’ve made it! We survived BAE 2016!  
> Thanks a lot to the mods for their patience, their kind emails and for all the work put into organizing this fest. And thanks a lot to every one of you who dedicates their time to read my little contribution to this fest.

Baekhyun was lying in his dark hospital room, staring at the ceiling. 

The lights were out, and everyone was already sleeping, but Baekhyun was having trouble with it. On the other side of the room he saw his roommate’s bed, empty. He had been discharged that morning, among everyone’s goodbyes. The small room felt strange without him. He had already been there when Baekhyun came, and he had taken his presence for granted, as a part of his routine, of his life there; as there were the meds, the doctors and the nurses, the living room or the small garden outside. 

He had been there for two months now, but it felt like he’d always been there, life had always been like this. Everything else seemed so far away. Everything before Baekhyun woke up in another hospital room, with several broken bones, his mother crying and the nurse explaining to him that he had been _so lucky_ to survive a car crash like that, seemed like covered by a thick fog. 

He didn’t remember well the days before that. They all merged together, covered by that grey mist. The days, the months, those last years since he started university. He remembered the pain, but couldn’t remember how it started. When feelings like sadness, and loneliness, and fear, had stopped being occasional visitors to start accompanying him everywhere he went. When he realized he was an adult now, was starting to live the life it was expected of him –he even was in the same law school his parents meet– and there was just no way he could do it. 

Because, you know, Baekhyun didn’t have a car accident. He had tried to kill himself, and when the nurse told him it was miraculous he had survived, he cried, because he hadn’t want to. He had wanted to put an end to everything, and rest. 

He had just wanted to rest. That was all. He was tired of the pain, but in the last months, even that wasn’t that important. The insecurities and the fear, and the raw pain inside of his chest had left place to the most surprising and absolute of numbness. In the end there was only that, numbness and exhaustion, and the certainty that, for people like him, life would always feel like that. He had been just a child before, naïve and happy, and then a teenager, sometimes less happy, but still naïve. But now he was supposed to be a normal adult person, and he soon learnt he couldn’t. He wasn’t strong enough, handsome enough, good enough with people. He was a weirdo. And so one day he decided to act on his fantasies about disappearing, about being able to rest, and drove out of the road. 

The first nurse that took care of him, when he was still in the first hospital, after the surgery in his right leg, when he had also both eyes black and a splint over his nose, asked him if he hadn’t thought about his parents. Baekhyun didn’t answer, because he knew the nurse wouldn’t understand him. He had, that’s why he didn’t do it before. That’s why the months before it had been just fantasies, wishes he could go to bed and never wake up, or that a car would run over him, so it wouldn’t be his fault. Wishing nothing loved him, so he wouldn’t feel obligated to keep existing. Not his parents, not the few friends he still had, even if they were far, studying at other universities. Not even his old corgi at the family’s house. 

He only stayed two weeks in that hospital, anyway. After that, when if it were a normal accident he could have gone home and only return for check-ups and removing the cast, his parents took him to a psychiatric hospital. 

‘We just don’t know how we can help you, Baekhyun’ his mother had said. She was crying, but the thing that shocked Baekhyun the most was that his father’s eyes were red too. Baekhyun had never seen his parents cry. They were the kind of family that took pride in not displaying excessive emotion, in working hard and always strive towards success as family values ‘We thought we were doing it right. That we had raised you in the way that was best for you. And we couldn’t even see this coming, and now that it’s happened, I don’t have, we don’t have the slightest idea of what’s any of this, how we can help you. I don’t even know how to help my own son’ she finished, crying harder, while Baekhyun sat in the hospital bed, not feeling anything. 

Baekhyun didn’t blame them for putting him in here. He just didn’t thought anyone could help him, so he didn’t really care where he was. He had tried to kill himself, to be nowhere. If he had to stay here, still, he didn’t care if it was in a hospital, in his home, or in the university dorm. All places were the same for him. 

The first day in the hospital, after their parents left, they sent him straight to talk to the psychiatrist of the center, while the nursing assistants prepared his room. Baekhyun didn’t talk much in that first visit, but he did tell the doctor, a woman passing her fifties that wore her hair grey, what he thought. He wasn’t sick. It was just that, for some people, life was shit. They didn’t fit, they weren’t good enough, they had terrible bad luck. Life didn’t hold hopes for them the same way it did for normal people. For the ones being able to be strong. 

‘When people are depressed like I believe you are, Baekhyun, that’s the way they think. They think nothing can change, that is just the way they are. They believe what they think of themselves, of life, is reality exactly as everyone else perceives it. They think the way one thinks and feels is immovable, that is a part of their character, and the character of each of us is set in stone. After all, how could medicine have to do with feelings and thoughts? They’re not physical body parts one can fix, as it is your leg’ the psychiatrist had told him, pointing to his cast. ‘But depression, as many other mental disorders, is an illness and can be cured. It has its physical roots in the chemistry of your brain and its physical consequences, too. Haven’t you been feeling tired all the time?’ Baekhyun frowned, because she was right, and the psychiatrist smiled kindly at him, like she already knew it. ‘And even if your depression wasn’t severe enough to be treated with medicines, there are psychological approaches that help people learn to challenge their thought patterns, and the way they look at life. Actually, what helps best is a combined approach, and that’s what you will be receiving during your stay here. Trust me Baekhyun, you don’t need to believe these things are going to help you; you just need to let us help you start taking the first steps. Hope will come along the way.’ 

And Baekhyun had shrugged, because he didn’t believe it, he didn’t care, but he didn’t have anything to lose or anything better to do, so he started taking the pills the psychiatrist had prescribed for him that same day. He did it in an infirmary room, in front of a couple of nurses who watched him do it, and took his constants, and after that, was accompanied to the living room of the center, where a young and tall male nurse –the only one working there, Baekhyun realized later– introduced him with a bright smile to the rest of the patients. 

It had been two months since that, Baekhyun thought. It seemed like a lifetime. When he didn’t know who Chanyeol was, and the only thing he had realized about him at first was that he was the only male nurse in a big female staff. 

No, he thought. He had realized his smile, too. It would have been impossible to miss it, even in the clouded, confused, hopeless state he was then. 

-x-

The next day, Chanyeol had been the one who woke him up, smiling like a madman and approaching him his crutches, too far happy for that hour of the day, while Baekhyun’s roommate warned him he was always like that. 

He had been the one who watched him took his pills, who had measured his temperature and blood pressure and who gave him a tour around the center explaining everything to him, until he had his daily interview with the psychiatrist, to check his progress and the way his meds were working. The one who picked him up after that and led him again to the living room, where the patients used to spend most of their time, and were he was introduced and welcomed. 

Chanyeol had the morning shift, so Baekhyun soon got used to him waking him up with his maniac smile and an energy that was enough to make him tired just being in the same room. He got used to swallow his pills in front of him, and talk to him about how he was feeling in the morning check-up. He got used to talk to him during breaks, while he waited for his short daily session with the psychiatrist, or the longer Friday one with the psychologist. 

After the first three weeks, when his meds started to kick in, and he started to shed the numbness, he started to find the nurse’s chronic happiness damn irritating. He used to talk to his roommate about how it should be forbidden for people like him to work with depressed patients –because when Baekhyun started to feel things like a normal person again, the first feelings coming back weren’t the good ones–. Often, Baekhyun couldn’t help but snap at him with sarcastic remarks or just plainly told him he was too happy for his liking, but Chanyeol never got mad at him, or lost his smile. He even thought Baekhyun was _funny_. Funny, not mean and bitter. And after that, his moods stabilized and he was not only used to Chanyeol’s presence but also appreciated it. 

Baekhyun pretty much liked all his nurses, but Chanyeol, despite having been the one that irritated him the most at first, was his favorite. In the afternoons and the nights, when Chanyeol wasn’t there, Baekhyun missed him. It was ‘free-time’ and Baekhyun, though he enjoyed spending time reading and with some of the other patients, missed him. The nurses worked a lot, but Chanyeol always seemed to have time to talk in a laid-back way to all the patients, and remembered all the things they told him. Chanyeol seemed to be the kind of person who couldn’t understand how could anyone decide to kill himself, or how could anyone be unhappy when life was so full of beautiful things, but he always listened emphatically and didn’t make Baekhyun felt guilty telling him how one day he had felt like driving his car out of the road and down a slope. Chanyeol had just taken his hand, and hold it tight between his big ones. Chanyeol had brought him comics from the library when there wasn’t anything else left in the center he felt like reading. Chanyeol had drawn a corgi in his now removed cast to make him smile. 

He wasn’t much older than him and he seemed like one of the cool guys in his university, tall, handsome, with dark shiny hair. Baekhyun thought a guy like him would have never been his friend in the outside world. He hadn’t even been sure he could call Chanyeol a friend, since it was his job, since he was nice to everyone, but somewhere inside his heart, he had started to imagine Chanyeol paid slightly more attention to him than to the rest of the patients, laughed more than normal when he was with him. 

-x-

  
The more Baekhyun looked in the direction of his roommate’s empty bed, the more uneasy he felt. He had spent a good part of these two months trying to rebuild whoever he was, and he always knew it was so he could someday put himself in the outside world again. But when he started his stay there, his therapy, that end of the road was nowhere to be seen, and he couldn't have felt fear about it even if he tried. It was too far away.

But it wasn’t that far anymore. The doctors had told him he was making good progress and he could be discharged in a few weeks. He would be out, like his roommate was now, and he wondered if he was ready. If he could ever be. When he entered the hospital, he was hopeless, and in his hopelessness, he had been sure. Now he had picked some hopes along the way, and they were tiny, but they were real. And having hope meant he thought everything could, somehow turn ok, but also brought the fear that he could fuck up along the way. 

When he was deep in the darkness, he couldn't see ahead, and he didn't care. Now that he was seeing a tiny light at the end of his tunnel, he realized how far away he still was, and wondered if he could do it, even if he tried. It seemed almost impossible with all that work ahead of him. He realized how much he would have to catch up, when all the rest of the people have been living their normal lives, swimming towards the coast while he was first drowning deep and after, just trying to stay afloat and breathe. 

Climbing out of the hole felt worse than being trapped deep inside, and in moments like these, Baekhyun was afraid he wouldn't be able to, that he would fall back. He hoped he would be strong, but feared he would be falling and trying to climb out of the well of his depression all his life. He knew the pain of falling back would be worse now, after having remembered what hope tasted like, after all that time. 

He thought of Chanyeol. He had been the first of his tiny hopes, and probably he hadn't picked it up as much as he had stumbled on it. Baekhyun smiled in the darkness, remembering, even if Chanyeol's memory made all kind of insecurities stir inside him, reaching for his lungs, his stomach, his heart; trying to close their claws around them and tighten the grip. 

He had developed a special relationship with him, among all the nurses, pretty early; but if he looked back, he could see how that relationship had changed, how it has crossed all those turning points that had lead them to the place they were now. A strange place that fueled both Baekhyun’s hopes and his fears; and even looking back now, Baekhyun really had to pay attention to see the exact moment, the very instant, in which things had shifted and had become something different between them two. 

Baekhyun guessed the first one had been just after one of his Friday sessions with the psychologist, a day in which they had been talking about ideas the doctor said Baekhyun still held like absolute truths, but were hurting him. 

‘The point of the therapy we’re having, Baekhyun, is to teach you how to challenge your thoughts, to stop thinking in absolutes, and make you realize that the things you’re telling yourself are, first, not necessarily true, and also, harmful sometimes. But it seems to me that in this particular matter, you keep thinking that there is only one way to be a functioning adult person, only one way to be normal, and to be successful, and this is the way your family has always lived their lives. And you keep thinking that, since you can’t live to these expectations, you can _never_ be normal, and you can _never_ be happy.’ 

Baekhyun nodded, because that was pretty much that was what he though, nicely summed. 

‘Do you think all the homosexual people can never be normal, Baekhyun?’ 

‘I haven’t said that’ replied Baekhyun, shocked. 

‘Then why you keep thinking than you can never be normal? That you can never be happy?’ 

‘Because it’s different. They can be happy, but not me. It’s impossible. They don’t have a traditional family like I have. Doctor, you don’t know how Asian families can be. They don’t have the bar set so high; they don’t have this pressure to pass on the family name.’ 

‘I’m sure some of them do. And still, they find a way to live their lives in a way that makes them happy. Some of them, maybe, did it without help. Some of them maybe needed the support of therapy like you’re doing now. The point is that, at some point, they find a way to be happy’ 

‘I’m telling you, doctor, that won’t work for me.’ 

‘Why not, if it worked for them? If it did it in the same circumstances, or others equally difficult ? And the same goes for the other expectations you place over yourself about the way you’re supposed to be normal, to live your life. Not all people have high paying jobs they can brag about, not all people are beautiful according to every one of the societal norms, and not all people fulfill every one expectation. And still, that doesn’t make them unable to have a happy life’ 

‘They don’t have it the way I have. My parents, if they knew I’m attracted to men, that I’m not going to give them a grandchild of their own, if I choose another career and not enter their law firm…’ Baekhyun shook his head again. 

‘Do you think they won’t love you, if you do?’ Baekhyun stayed silent. He didn’t know. ‘Your parents seemed worried when they brought you here. I think they care. But I’m not trying to argue with you. In some families, yes, this is a cause of rupture. And still some people do it anyway and find a way to be happy after, even if they had preferred to have things other way. Because at some point, you have to ask yourself if it’s worthy to live a life you don’t like, just to conform to the expectations’ 

Baekhyun hadn’t answer then. He had been confused, wondering for the first time in his life if that was even a possibility, not to live his life in the way he had always thought he should, he had to. 

‘Well, changing your thought patterns is a slow process, so don’t worry if you can’t make sense of everything yet. I’ll see you next week, and until then, I just want you to pay attention to your negative thoughts, and try to argue them, as I’ve taught those last sessions.’ 

Baekhyun had left the doctor’s office thinking about all of it. For the first time in his life, he allowed himself to fantasize about how it would be if he could be openly gay, instead of pushing the thoughts into a corner of his mind. Instead of telling himself there was no point thinking about that, if he had to end up marrying a woman and have children to keep alive the family name. He wondered how it would be to go and walk around the streets, hand in hand, with another man. How it would be to kiss him, and how it would be to share a house, and a life, and live like any normal couple did, with a person he really wanted to be with. 

He wondered how his kind of man would be. He’d never really thought about it –again, there was no point before–. Tall, he thought? Kind, for sure. Funny. A good guy. He was pretty sure he was into good guys. 

But then, his insecurities kicked in. He was still Baekhyun, stupid Baekhyun. A pathetic nineteen year old who was so screwed inside who had tried to kill himself, and had a big scar in his right leg to prove it. Someone anxious, and emotionally unstable, with an uncertain future in front of him. Ugly, and chubby, and too short in his own opinion. Surely there won’t be any single decent guy who would want him. The normal guys would want a normal relationship, with someone who was also normal. 

In that moment, he felt like crying. In some ways, now everything was more difficult than when he tried to kill himself. When he had hit rock bottom, he felt numb. Now that he could felt the medication working, that he started to realize his own thoughts and feelings, the awareness and the moments he actually felt hope only made the vast majority of dark feelings seem stronger by comparison. 

Who could want someone like him? He didn’t know of any guy who was the type of people Baekhyun could like, and who had ever paid attention to him or wouldn’t think he was a weirdo. And he wasn’t good with people. He would be alone forever. 

And then, as he was going back to his room to spend the rest of the morning reading, he ran into Chanyeol. And Chanyeol smiled at him, his bright, big smile, so full of life, of confidence, of all the good things Baekhyun longed for and didn’t feel inside him, and took his hand. He convinced him to go to the living room, with the rest of the people, and talked him out of his despairing mood until he had to go to attend some another thing, and then, it hit him. 

He knew someone who was the kind of guy he could ever like, kind, and handsome, and confident and nice. Someone who was all the things he wanted, and also, had always looked at him like he was completely normal, as person just as normal as he was himself, even if he was in this place. Someone who seemed to enjoy his company, and who thought he was funny, and smart, and sensitive instead of weak, and _‘just fine the way you are, Baekhyun, is just that you’ve been beating yourself up too much for a long time’_. 

And it stung, because now Baekhyun realized the full extent of feelings he hadn’t been able to put a finger on before, when he wished for Chanyeol’s company, and also, that he had started to long for Chanyeol in a way he couldn’t have him. 

-x-

  
Baekhyun had realized then that he had started to like Chanyeol in a different way, not as his favorite nurse, not as his friend, if he could call him that –he hoped he could, he hoped Chanyeol also thought of him as a friend of sorts and not just another patient– but as someone he wanted to be with.

And it was both difficult and strange; to try to do like nothing had changed between them two. Because if he was realistic, nothing had changed. He liked Chanyeol, but that didn’t change anything outside of his head, and he knew it had to be like that. He knew that he often wasn’t rational, but even him, even in his state, knew that Chanyeol couldn’t let his relationship with his patients become too personal, too intimate, and much less, be involved with any of them. When he hoped Chanyeol considered him a friend too, he still knew there were limits, that they weren’t friends like they could maybe have been in the outside world. They were friends in that particular world that was now all Baekhyun had, a world were, over all the things, Baekhyun was a patient and Chanyeol a nurse. They talked a lot, but it was always about Baekhyun, or about music, and comics, and series and other common things. Chanyeol didn’t tell much about himself, and Baekhyun, even if he wanted to ask, knew it wasn’t appropriate. 

And if there were limits to their friendship, there were much more limits to anything romantic Baekhyun could feel. If Baekhyun didn’t know where Chanyeol lived, or the name of any of his friends outside the hospital, much less he knew about if Chanyeol was single, or to begin with, if he was even gay. Not only it wasn’t something he could ask, or something Chanyeol could tell him, also, he would have never wanted to make Chanyeol uncomfortable if he didn’t want to answer. He would have never wanted to make anything that could put a space between them to. 

So it had to remain inside. It couldn’t change anything. But still, inside him it changed everything, and it was hard. To keep smiling at him, like nothing happened inside his guts when he saw Chanyeol. To not stare at him all the time. To not go and talk to him constantly, because Chanyeol had work to do and he didn’t want anyone to suspect he had done something as stupid as to fall in love with the nurse that was taking care of him. He kept looking at him from the distance, kept trying to find moments to talk, fell asleep anticipating how Chanyeol would wake him in the morning, like he always did. He kept feeling down every time the afternoon came and Chanyeol’s shift ended. 

But Chanyeol kept smiling at him, kept talking to him, trying always to be reassuring. He kept telling Baekhyun how much he had improved, and catching fast all the slips in his mood so they wouldn’t become major fallbacks. But all the same time, he also talked to Baekhyun about all kind of normal and boring things. Trivial talks that Baekhyun had come to cherish because they were his boring, normal moments with Chanyeol. Like he was just as anyone else and not just a sick boy in a mental hospital. And he kept smiling, always smiling, a smile too big for his face, and sometimes he took his hand and gave him a short, reassuring squeeze. And then Baekhyun’s heart broke into a million stupid, lovesick pieces. And after those moments and those talks, when he was still high in the sky and still hadn’t time to think and worry about all the ways things couldn’t be, he thought it seemed Chanyeol also searched for him in little ways. 

He thought maybe it meant something that a lot of times, when he looked up to stare at Chanyeol, he already found him staring at him. Even if Chanyeol never seemed to be embarrassed as Baekhyun when he was caught and acted completely normal, smiling big and waving at him with too much energy. 

-x-

Soon it was the beginning of May, the air was warmer in the little hospital’s garden and it started to feel like it really was spring, even if they were more than a month into it. Baekhyun hadn’t really paid attention before, like he hadn’t paid attention either to a lot of other things the first weeks after his suicide attempt, but now he did. The trees had leaves again, and the sun felt nice over his skin, and for the first time in months, he realized he was able to feel something nice again, even if it was a satisfaction as small as that. He had been there for almost two months now, and his doctors had told him he was making good progress –Chanyeol seemed extremely happy about it– and that maybe he could leave the hospital in a few weeks. He would have to continue with the therapy and meds outside, but he wouldn’t be in risk of suicide anymore, and he could leave the hospital. 

His parents were coming to visit him soon. They had visited him once, about a month ago, but Baekhyun didn’t remember much about that visit. He had been too deep in his hole then. But now he felt stronger, even if he still feared the possibility of telling his parents the things that had been troubling him; and realized he missed them and wanted to see them. 

Chanyeol came and sit near him in one of the garden’s benches. 

‘So how’s my favorite patient this morning?’ he said, smiling at him. Baekhyun wanted to blush, but he just rolled his eyes back at him, and then smiled back. 

‘You tell that to all of your patients, you heartbreaker’ he replied. 

‘I do,’ Chanyeol laughed. ‘But with you I always tell the truth’ 

‘And again, I bet you tell also that to everyone’ Baekhyun laughed too. 

‘Oh, you never know’ said Chanyeol. He was still smiling, but he had a different smile now. It was softer. 

‘The other staff has told me they’ve never seen a nurse receive as many cookies and chocolates as you do. I’m sure your being nice is a plot’ 

‘Maybe it is. I like cookies’ he looked at Baekhyun. ‘So how are you feeling? I know your parents are coming to visit you today’ 

‘I feel…nervous’ Baekhyun was looking at the grass and the trees in front of him, instead of at Chanyeol. ‘I want to see them, but there are so many things I have to tell them yet… I don’t know if I’m ready. I don’t know how they’ll react, and I don’t know if I’m ready to face their reaction. I wanted to start telling them some things today and now, as the moment approaches, I’m not so sure’ 

Chanyeol reached for his hand and squeezed it slightly, that gesture that always got to Baekhyun in a way nothing else did. ‘I know you’re nervous. But even if you aren’t ready to tell them now, or things don’t exactly go the way you hope, everything will be ok eventually’ 

Baekhyun smiled weakly. ‘I hope so. I have to tell them first about the university. I’m not ready to go back yet. It’s almost the end of the semester and I know they don’t expect me to finish it, but I’m not sure I’m ready to go back to university for the next one. I’m not even sure I want to go back to law school. I never thought I had any option but to go there, with my parent’s law firm and all. And I never felt a call for anything else, so even if I didn’t really liked it I thought that was all there was. Before I thought not really liking it wasn’t reason enough to leave the family path but now… now I see forcing myself to follow it was making me more miserable than I realized’ 

‘And also… I want to tell them that I’m gay, now that I’m starting to accept it. But that’s even more difficult than telling them about the university. We are a traditional family. Really, I’ve always thought that’s the word that really defines us. I’m expected to give them grandchildren, to pass on the family name. In our environment, I don’t know of anybody who is openly gay, and has tried to live their lives according to that. You are supposed to marry; you are supposed to act like the rest of the families. It’s like… when the therapist says it, it sounds stupid, but I guess I still kept repeating it inside my head. I don’t know of anybody who is Asian, and gay, and “normal”. So even with the therapy, it’s still difficult for me to believe that I can be all those things together. Asian, and gay, and still normal. Still happy.’ 

‘Baekhyun, I’m Asian, and gay and normal. So you know at least one person’ he said, shrugging and giving him a small smile. 

Baekhyun looked at Chanyeol. He looked casual, like he had just made another ordinary remark to reassure him. As trivial as telling him he also liked sports, or books, even if there was something in Chanyeol’s eyes that Baekhyun couldn’t really catch and understand. But it was the first time Chanyeol told him anything personal, and he wanted to ask why, to ask more about it. He wanted to ask about how he lived his life at peace with it, what had been his parent’s reaction. But he realized that Chanyeol couldn’t tell him, that it would be crossing a line he couldn’t cross while they were both there, being him a patient and Chanyeol a nurse. Chanyeol had just lean over that line a bit, to offer him a reassurance that was out of his possibilities as a nurse, and Baekhyun just acknowledged the signal that they did share a special relationship, even having the roles they had. 

‘C’mon Chanyeol, I said normal,’ he said, smiling, and Chanyeol laughed out loud. 

It was a laughter that ringed in Baekhyun’s ears, like music. 

-x-

The evening his parents came to visit him was a strange one for Baekhyun. He kept thinking about the revelation that Chanyeol was gay too, and had told him, even if that couldn’t change how platonic his relationship with him was. It still had to mean something that he told him, right? Even if it just was a tacit agreement that they were really friends, after all, that they could share some things that being just a patient and a nurse they couldn’t share. 

And then, when his parents arrived to the hospital he was allowed to go out with them, and they went for coffee together, like a normal family. His mother kept holding Baekhyun’s hand between hers, and telling him how glad she was to see he was recovering, while his father agreed. She told him she had started going to a counselor too, and that she was sorry they had been putting that much pressure over him without always realizing, that they hadn’t been closer, that they hadn’t known how to be a different kind of parents. And then his mother told him that they were looking forward to the moment he was discharged, that he could go home with them and take as much time as he needed to recover and he would start university again when he was ready. Baekhyun was shocked, and found difficult to reconcile those words with the memory of his mother losing her temper when he was preparing his exam to access university, telling him he wasn’t studying enough and he couldn’t get in a good university that way. Or after, when he made it into the one their parents had studied and met, and she had kept telling him that he needed always to aim to be between the first of his promotion. 

But she had really said that, and his father had nodded, and both their expressions seemed softer than Baekhyun remembered in a long time. And Baekhyun had missed them a lot, had longed to feel understood and loved by them, and so he just relished in the feeling and didn’t dare to tell them the rest yet, to break the atmosphere. 

\--x-

-

After that he should have kept improving, but he didn’t. 

Up to this point, the therapy and the medication had been working fine. He no longer felt paralyzed by sadness, or worthlessness, and he no longer saw grey, dullness and misery as the only possible outcomes for the future. He had hopes again, even if they were simple, even if they weren’t many. The hope of coming back home and rest, and being accepted by his family even if he wasn’t perfect, even if he hadn’t been able to live up to the expectations. The hope of one day being able to live his own life, with all that he was, and think it was as good as anyone else’s. The hope of one day being loved flawed as he was. 

The hope of one day having someone like Chanyeol. 

He wished he could have Chanyeol, and not just someone like Chanyeol, but he knew it was impossible. Despite knowing that the nurse was also gay, that he trusted him enough to share that about his life, that didn’t make him any less impossible. Even if he sometimes still suspected Chanyeol liked him a bit in the same way he did, he still couldn’t be sure. Chanyeol had never done anything more than being nice to him and telling him, once, casually, that he was also gay. And even if he had been sure, he was conscious of all the way things couldn’t be. That Chanyeol couldn’t, and wouldn’t, risk his job, his integrity as a professional like that. That even the day he were out of this place, the day he wouldn’t be a patient anymore, he would still know nothing about Chanyeol, and he wouldn’t be in touch with him any longer. Even if there was a way he could, it was still different to support someone recovering from depression, to be his friend, than to have a romantic relationship with him, a relationship that would already start with a fair share of difficulties. 

He thought he should be grateful to Chanyeol, for giving him one of the little hopes that had helped him start recovering, the hope to see him again the next day, of seeing him smile, of knowing someone could appreciate him the way he was. For letting him know people like him existed. But still, it was hard to think that he couldn’t have him, than when he was outside, when he was discharged like the doctors keep telling him he could be soon, he would lose him. That he had him only for as long as he was in that strange world. That world small and protected that had necessarily to be temporary. 

And Baekhyun wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready to leave, even if the doctors and Chanyeol told him he was, even if his parents were expecting him outside. He knew it. He had started to recover his life, to rebuild himself, but he had learned to have a life, to be someone, only inside this world. Outside he wouldn’t be able. Outside he would be too weak. 

He was afraid. When he was in the middle of the darkness, he hadn’t care about the future –in that moment for him it didn’t exist–, and in that way, it had been easier. When he was completely weak he didn’t care about fighting, because he knew he couldn’t and didn’t have to wonder about the outcome, because he knew everything was already a lost battle. But now he knew he was better, he had to fight, but what if he still lost? What if, after all, after all the effort to recover, all the faith of his doctors, of Chanyeol, of his parents, he still wasn’t able to function like a normal person? What if he never was normal, after having thought for a moment, that he could be? What if he had to battle this monster all his life? 

So he started falling back. He still wanted to be outside the hospital, he still wanted the hopes waiting for him on the other side, but other times, sometimes, he just wanted to stay there, in his particular limbo. To be at that place where he could never fully face his demons, never conquer them, but also, never be badly hurt by them. Where he couldn’t have Chanyeol, but he couldn’t lost him completely either. 

His doctors had told him that now that he didn’t entertain suicide thoughts and seemed recovered enough to continue the therapy outside he would be able to leave soon, and that would be the best for him. And when he had told them he didn’t feel ready they have acknowledged it, but still, had pointed to him that he couldn’t stay there indefinitely. That maybe, he would never feel completely ready to leave, to be an adult, a normal person, and still, he was as ready as he needed to start. 

Baekhyun didn’t quite believe them. He grew increasingly anxious, and Chanyeol was worried about this change in his recovery timeline, but Baekhyun couldn’t confide in him as before, when one of the reasons that made him ambivalent about his stay there was him. 

Still, he knew he couldn’t stay there forever, and that the date of his departure was approaching. And then, one day, his roommate was discharged. He, who had been there since Baekhyun came, as part of his routine as Chanyeol coming to wake him every morning was, was suddenly gone. And Baekhyun already knew it, had known it all this time, and still, it hit him: he would too have to leave soon. 

-x-

So Baekhyun lied there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling. 

The room seemed eerily empty to him, his roommate’s bed perfectly made in the other side of the room. He tried to sleep but he couldn’t, tossing and turning in the sheets. 

It seemed like the darkness of the room was getting thicker, was slowly surrounding his bed. There were some lights coming from the lamps outside in the garden, dim and faded by the curtains, but this night they didn’t help to curb the darkness. They just made everything seem more spectral. 

He started breathing faster. He could feel how the bed was getting hotter and hotter, how a cold sweat was beginning to form in the back of his neck. The thoughts that had been more or less controlled during the day now raced fast through his mind. Without order, without control, in chaotic circles. 

He wasn’t ready leave. Not yet. Not ever. He would never be good enough. He would never be strong enough, emotionally stable enough, normal enough. He would try to go and tell his parents that he wanted something different, that he wanted a different life, a different career and a different significant other from the ones he was supposed to have, and they would kick him out of their home. They would never understand him. He could never find people who liked him, being the small, stupid person he was. He would never find anyone to love, anyone who would love him back. He could never be strong to build a life completely different from the one that was laid in front of him and he was too weak to fit in. He would try and miserably fail, and this time the devastation would be worse, because nothing could taste as much of despair as losing again and again the same old battles. 

This was all the normal he could ever be. He wanted to stay here, with his parents visiting him, and loving him, and never having to talk about things that could wait outside forever, never weighting between them. He wanted to stay here and have someone to love who would like him back, even if it was just a little, even if it was just as a patient. He wanted to stay there, but they wouldn’t let him. 

His demons were back tonight, with him. They greeted him as old friends, glad to see him back. Oh, Baekhyun, you little idiot. How could you think that you could ever live a happy life, that you could ever have someone who loved you, being just the way you are. 

The darkness was suffocating. It felt like his ribs were smaller and smaller, constricting his lungs. It felt like they were going to break, it felt like he was going to choke. 

He sat up in the bed and rang the nurse’s bell. He was breathing fast, and kept inhaling faster and faster, but still seemed like the air didn’t reached his lungs. He needed a glass of water. He needed a pill to tranquillize him. He needed someone to come and talk to him, even if he couldn’t focus on the words, so he wouldn’t be there alone in the darkness. He needed help, any help, and he just rang the bell, desperate. 

It was just seconds until someone came to his room, but to Baekhyun it felt like much more, like the thick darkness was also slowing the time, capturing him in an eternity made of despair. 

‘Baekhyun!’ Chanyeol exclaimed when he saw him. ‘What’s happening?’ 

Baekhyun looked at him like he was seeing him through a fog. He had forgotten that Chanyeol had to change his shift again that night, and that he would be the one in his floor, coming to his call. He didn’t know if he would have called him sooner, or if he wouldn’t have called at all. 

Chanyeol ran to Baekhyun’s side, worried. ‘What’s happening, Baekhyun? Please, tell me what’s happening’ 

‘I can’t breathe, Chanyeol,’ Baekhyun started, and as soon as he opened his mouth the tears began to run down his cheeks. ‘I can’t breathe. Everything is too suffocating. I feel like they’re sticking needles through my heart, I feel like my own mind is torturing me. I don’t know what to do. Please, help me. Help me. Make it stop, please.’ 

‘Breathe with me, Baekhyun,’ Chanyeol acted calm, confident in how he had to his work, but there was also something in his expression, like his worry wasn’t completely justified in a professional way. ‘Breathe with me. Inhale now. Hold it a moment. Exhale. Slowly. See? You can do it. Let’s do it again, at this pace.’ He showed him the rhythm with his own breath, and after some moments, Baekhyun started to feel like the knot in his chest has loosened. 

‘Don’t worry, Baekhyun. I’m here. I can help you. Are you feeling better now?’ 

Baekhyun nodded, sobbing. ‘Yes. But don’t go, please. Don’t go yet. Stay with me’ 

‘I’m not going anywhere, Baek’ he said, searching for something in the pockets of his uniform. He pulled out a small box of pills, and took one, round and white for Baekhyun. ‘These are anxiolytics, like the ones you take in the morning with the antidepressants. And we can also give them to you again, to a maximum that the doctor establishes, when you’re having an anxiety attack like now. I’m going to give you another one now, ok?’ 

Baekhyun nodded again, and Chanyeol reached for the water bottle in his nightstand. He then offered him both the pill and the bottle, and watched him swallow, as he did in the mornings, when he made sure all the patients took his meds. 

‘You will start to feel it soon,’ Chanyeol said, speaking quietly. His voice seemed even lower when he talked like that, and it was somehow odd. How he could be so similar to a big puppy and at the same time, have that deep, calm voice, know how to stay composed in the middle of a breakdown and talk people out of it. It slipped through Baekhyun. It made him shiver. ‘And then you will probably feel very sleepy and will be able to go back to bed easily.’ 

‘But you’re not going to leave me yet, right?’ Baekhyun said, trying to wipe his tears with the sheet. He felt slightly better, but he was still very uneasy. He could feel still feel his demons lurking inside, not gone yet. 

‘No, I’m not going to leave you,’ Chanyeol said, smiling as softly as he was talking. ‘Not until you fall asleep. Or until someone else needs me, but I think they’re all sleeping now, so you don’t have to worry,’ he paused for a moment ‘So, do you want to talk about what’s happened? Or do you prefer not to?’ 

‘I don’t know what’s happened, Chanyeol,’ Baekhyun replied. ‘Or I know what’s happened, but I don’t know how. It’s just that I’ve been worried these last days and tonight I was worrying too, and suddenly, I couldn’t make it stop. And then it started to feel like I couldn’t breathe, and like all my demons-,’ he paused to look at Chanyeol’s face. ‘Like all the things I used to feel before I came here, had come back to haunt me.’ 

‘And do you want to tell me what were those things?’ Chanyeol asked. He took Baekhyun’s hand over the comforter, and Baekhyun felt how warmth he was. The rest of Baekhyun’s body was cold, and he could feel the sweat drying over his skin, making him freeze. He could feel the point of contact between his body and Chanyeol’s, the warmth, like a point of light in the middle of the darkness. It was as it was the only thing that kept him anchored. ‘I’ve realized you were feeling worse these days, but it seemed that you didn’t want to talk, and there was little I could do, apart from keeping an eye on you. But Baekhyun, I want you to keep in mind that no matter how bad you’re feeling, you’ve done so much progress all this time. Relapses are normal, and can be expected to happen, but it’s not like you go back at square zero. You have learned a lot, so it’s never like going back at the same point again.’ 

‘I don’t know, Chanyeol,’ Baekhyun had started to cry again. ‘It feels like it. Those things… you know the things that are back… They are voices… no, they are parts of me, telling me I’m not good enough. That I will never be normal. That I will never be loved. And I still believe them, after all this therapy. Sometimes I can resist them, but sometimes I don’t. And I fear outside here, without all the help, having to face for myself all the difficulties, I won’t be able to resist them, not a single time.’ 

‘Baekhyun, you are already normal,’ Chanyeol was looking at him with a sad expression, like it hurt him seeing him like that. ‘You are already loved.’ 

Baekhyun shook his head, hiccupping. ‘But I can’t feel it. I can’t believe it,’ he replied. And then, without thinking, he thrown himself in Chanyeol’s arms, trying to run away from the despair, from the cold. 

Chanyeol didn’t push him aside. He let him sob in his shoulder, and he held him tight. ‘Baekhyun,’ he muttered against his hair. ‘Baekhyun. That you can’t felt you are loved, or that you can’t believe it doesn’t mean you aren’t. I wish I could make you understand it.’ 

Baekhyun sobbed again. Chanyeol was so warm it felt like he’d stepped inside a fire. He was so warm, and his presence, so close, drowned him, intoxicated him. He was the person he loved, holding him tight, telling him that he was good, that he was enough. He liked him, right? He _needed_ Chanyeol to like him. He needed to know someone could like him. And Chanyeol had always treated him nice. He had caught him staring at him, he had told him he was gay when he was supposed not to tell him anything personal. He was hugging him now. Before he had had suspicions, but he hadn’t been able to fully believe them. He had silenced his wants, because he knew it was impossible, but now he didn’t care about impossibles. Now he needed to be sure. Needed to know if Chanyeol would want him, everything else be damned. 

He lifted his head and looked directly at Chanyeol’s eyes. Their faces were really close now. They were still tangled, Baekhyun’s arms still around Chanyeol’s neck, and Chanyeol’s arms around Baekhyun’s waist. Chanyeol gasped when he realized how close they were, how Baekhyun’s breath puffed against him. And for a moment, Baekhyun saw himself in his eyes. So close, skin so pale, eyes so dark and half-opened lips, looking directly at Chanyeol, and Chanyeol was paralyzed, like a deer in the headlights. 

In that instant Baekhyun could have stopped. Chanyeol didn’t seem so strong anymore, like he had always seemed to Baekhyun, and Baekhyun knew he could push him into kissing him. He knew he shouldn’t, but in that moment he knew he could, and for an instant, he felt powerful. He felt strong. He could make someone like Chanyeol fall, and when he touched his lips against Chanyeol’s, and Chanyeol closed his eyes and responded, the damnation tasted so sweet that for a moment, Baekhyun thought any price was worth it. 

Just for a moment. Just for an instant. 

Then suddenly Chanyeol was pushing him aside, looking terrified. 

‘Oh my god, Baekhyun, what are you doing?’ he looked at him and then, at the door. It was the middle of the night and no one had seen them, but still, he was frightened. ‘What am I doing?’ He got up and put his hands on his head, pulling compulsively with his hair. 

Baekhyun was frozen. The spell has faded, and in a matter of seconds, it didn’t seem like the price was worthy anymore. 

‘Do you realize what we’ve done, Baekhyun?’ asked Chanyeol. He looked upset, like he was going to need one of the pills he had given Baekhyun at any given moment. ‘If someone finds about his, they could fire me, and they would be completely right in doing so. This is abusing a patient. Maybe the only moral thing now is quitting my job. ’ 

‘It’s not abusing! I’m the one who wanted it. I’m the one who kissed you. Chanyeol, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I’ve done this to you. Don’t quit your job, please. No one will ever find it. I won’t tell anyone.' 

Chanyeol shook his head again. ‘I lead you in. I shouldn’t have treated you in a different way just because I liked you more. I shouldn’t have let this relationship develop. I shouldn’t have told you I’m gay, and I shouldn’t have hugged you now. I shouldn’t have answered your kiss. Baekhyun, it’s my fault, because even if it were appropriate to have a relationship with a patient, which it isn’t, you are not emotionally stable enough to make an informed decision. That’s what you can’t see. They teach us about things like this in seminars, goddammit. I knew all of this was wrong and still let it build. I let it happen.’ 

‘Chanyeol, please, Chanyeol,’ Baekhyun was crying now, again, and this time Chanyeol couldn’t, wouldn’t, comfort him. ‘Chanyeol, it’s not your fault. It’s mine. I’m an idiot, and I knew it was wrong too, and I still kissed you.’ 

‘You’re emotionally unstable. It’s not your fault. I’m the one who shouldn’t have let it happen’ 

Baekhyun sobbed. Chanyeol wasn’t listening to him. And all this time, Chanyeol had been treating him like he was all the normal he could be being there, and now he just kept repeating again and again that it wasn’t his fault because he was mentally unstable, and kept blaming just himself. Baekhyun preferred he blamed him. He did. 

He had never seen Chanyeol distressed, and now that he did, he hated it. Knowing he had been the one who had caused it, made him hate him even more. It made him hate himself. 

‘Chanyeol, you have to go,’ Baekhyun tried to find the strength to talk, to tell him to go, even if it was the last thing he wanted, when minutes before he had begged for him to stay. Because he had already screwed Chanyeol enough thinking just of the things he wanted. He had always told himself that he loved Chanyeol, but now Baekhyun felt like maybe he didn’t know what was love -just another one of the many flaws he already had-, because if he loved Chanyeol, he would have thought of him before doing that. ‘Chanyeol, you have to go. No one can see us like this. It’s been my fault, it’s been completely my fault and I won’t let this turn even worse for you. Please, don’t quit your job. You’re the best nurse in this hospital. Other people need you.’ 

‘I’m the best nurse in this hospital?’ Chanyeol repeated. Then, he laughed in a low voice, self-deprecating, and the sound broke Baekhyun’s heart. He turned to leave, and Baekhyun let him, because no matter how many things he wanted to say, not a single one of them was right in this moment. He saw Chanyeol leave his room, and close the door behind him, and then he pressed his face against the bed and screamed into his pillow. 

He hated himself so deeply. Now he wasn’t just a screwed up person, he had managed to screw up others deliberately, because for a moment he hadn’t cared enough. In a moment, he had destroyed the person he loved, and had lost any respect he could have for himself. Now he knew he was worthless. He had proved it, with witnesses. Now he not only knew he would never be strong enough to be happy in the outside world, he knew he couldn’t be happy there either. He couldn’t be happy anywhere, because he would always be with the person he despised the most: himself. 

He was crying. He didn’t know if he had stopped at any point since he had talked to Chanyeol. It felt like there weren’t tears left, but somehow, they kept flowing though his eyes. After all those hours crying, they felt like acid. 

Chanyeol had said that it was impossible to be back at square zero, but Chanyeol had been wrong before. It felt like he had been back even further, fallen even deeper. He didn’t know this new room in hell, solitary like all the rest, with his name written in the door. He hadn’t visited it before. Maybe there would always be deeper falls, more rooms in hell. 

When he had first entered the hospital, it was because he had tried to kill himself. In the last months, he hadn’t thought of dying, and the doctors had called it progress. But now, for the first time in weeks, he felt the wish to disappear again. He was such a mess. He wasn’t worthy. Everyone would be better without him. 

When he was falling asleep, out of the exhaustion of crying, because not even Chanyeol’s pill could have calmed him after what had happened, and old prayer came to his lips. It was the prayer of all the hopeless people, and it always went the same, even if the people who pronounced it hadn’t learnt it anywhere, even if they didn’t know each other, even if they were all far and they were all different. 

_I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up_

-x-

A different nurse woke him the next morning. 

If it had happened at a different time of the day it wouldn’t have hurt so much, but in the morning, Baekhyun hadn’t had time to remember what had happened yesterday, to prepare for the shock. So it hurt a lot, to hear another voice, to open his eyes and see another face. It made him wish he hadn’t wake up. 

But the nurse smiled at him, like Chanyeol had done all the days before her. Baekhyun knew her too, only not as good as Chanyeol. She used to work on the evenings. He guessed Chanyeol had changed shifts. 

‘Good morning, Baekhyun!’ she said, happily, and Baekhyun wasn’t able to answer, but he climb out of bed, even if he didn’t feel like it, because he knew that the nurses were kind, but firm, in not letting anyone spend the day in bed. He dragged his feet towards the infirmary room, and this time he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t see Chanyeol there either. He knew Chanyeol wouldn’t want to see him. He only hoped he hadn’t decided to renounce his job on a whim after what happened yesterday. 

The nurses realized something seemed wrong. The days before he had been falling back on his progress, but this morning the drop in his mood was much more pronounced. They asked him what was wrong, but there was so much everything Baekhyun couldn’t tell them. He felt like he had nowhere to go no, no safe haven anymore. He was afraid of what waited outside and he had managed to fuck up everything that made the hospital his safe world to stay. And he couldn’t tell anyone about it without endangering Chanyeol further, something that he would never do. 

They listened to his incomplete story about feeling like he had fucked up all the progress he had done, about how he felt complete terrible about himself again, even if he couldn’t give them reasons for this change. He knew they suspected he was keeping things for himself, but on the other hand, they were used to. No one here told everything that went through his head all the time. 

And the nurses comforted him, and then they did their job, like any other day. They set his visit to the psychiatrist sooner that day, weighed and took his blood pressure, and gave him his medication. 

Baekhyun stared at the pills before swallowing them for what it felt like a long time. There were three of them, and one was the small, white pill that Chanyeol had offered him the night before. 

So here he was, Baekhyun, the morning after the disaster. Again. Like he had been when he woke up in the other hospital after he tried to kill himself, with both eyes black, several broken bones, more bruises than he could count and a surgery in his right leg. Here he was, having to face a world that had changed completely, and having to face it feeling completely alone, even if there were people around helping him. This time the wounds were all inside, but it felt too similar 

He sighed. Back at square zero. But he had recovered then, right? Even if it was just to fuck it up again. If he looked at it closely, it was different this time. It was different in the morning, even if it still hurt like hell. Now, the morning after he didn’t keep thinking of disappearing. He still hated himself after what he had done, he still knew he had managed to lose Chanyeol completely, the first of the hopes that had made him stand up and get going. He still was afraid of everything that was ahead of him. But this time, even after the fall, he still remembered how hope had tasted. He remembered what he had hoped for. For being at peace with himself, for having a life he liked. He could still hope for that, even without Chanyeol. Even if there was now even more to fix. He wanted to try again and see if he could go farther, if he could not fuck it up this time. And maybe even if he fucked it up it wouldn’t be so bad as it had been not having hope, not having any horizon to walk towards. He could start again. He already knew he was able to. This was his second morning after the disaster, after all. 

Maybe Chanyeol was right. Maybe it was never square zero again, because now you knew that you had been able to walk the path before. That you had been brave even if you couldn’t remember the feeling right now. 

So what had he done then, two months ago? How had he started walking towards hope, towards the future, when he hadn’t even been able to see a path? Well, he had just woken up in the mornings, took his meds, and made the effort not to stay all day in bed. He could do that. He could take those first steps again. 

He swallowed his pills in front of the nurses, then went outside, to the garden, to wait for his daily appointment with the psychiatrist. Even after everything that had happened, for the world it was still spring and the trees exploded with life and green. The sun was still bright and warm. 

He sighed, closed his eyes and for the moment, just sat there, letting the sun bathe his skin. 

-x-

Baekhyun found after, with relief, that Chanyeol hadn’t quit his job. He had changed his shift for the evening one, and Baekhyun still saw him in the hospital, though less often. Baekhyun approached him once, a few days after the incident to tell him again he was sorry, and also that he realized he had been wrong letting their relationship came to the point it had come, because it had been dangerous and painful for both of them. 

Chanyeol still blamed himself for the most part, and Baekhyun didn’t try to argue him out of it, because he knew they shouldn’t be talking as they talked before. He had told him that, and he had also told him that he understood that Chanyeol needed to be away from him. That he thought they should be cordial so it wouldn’t be weird to the rest of people, but also, that after what had happened, they couldn’t go back to the relationship they had before. 

That’s how they spent the last month of Baekhyun in the hospital. The first days after the incident, the doctors had decided to delay Baekhyun’s departure, seeing he was feeling worse. But he recovered faster this time –after all, now he knew this wasn’t his square zero–and the date was set again. One month after the incident, Baekhyun found himself spending the evening in the same living room he had spent the three most decisive months of his life, and knowing it would be the last one. 

He was reading a book when Chanyeol entered the room, and when he saw him, he got up to talk to him. Chanyeol looked a bit tense when he saw him approach, as he did every time Baekhyun had needed to come and talk to him after the incident, but smiled at him. It was still a beautiful smile, Baekhyun thought. 

‘Today is my last day here,’ Baekhyun said. 

‘The other nurses have told me, yes,’ Chanyeol replied. His smile seemed fond now, like he could forget the sad awkwardness of their situation for a moment. ‘Congratulations, Baekhyun. I knew you would do it.’ 

Baekhyun could almost hear the words not pronounced, and it hurt a little. _I just wished your path to recovery didn’t have to happen in the way it did. I wish we could have shared it like the patient and nurse we were before, before everything went wrong._

‘The welcomes and farewells are in the morning’ said Baekhyun. ‘Will you come to mine?’ 

Chanyeol kept silent for a moment, but then, he smiled again, that smile that make it seem for a moment like everything was fine again, even if it couldn’t be. 

‘Of course, Baekhyun’ 

-x-

Chanyeol changed his shift to be present in his farewell. He stood there, saying goodbye to him with the rest of the nurses and the patients, looking at him with a smile that seemed a little sad, even if Baekhyun knew he was happy to see him recovered and ready to face the outside world. And then, all the nurses hugged him, and so did Chanyeol. No one saw that it was a bit awkward for them at first, made them remember an episode of a completely different mood. When they separated after the hug, Chanyeol looked at Baekhyun in the eyes, something he hadn’t done so often after the incident, and for a moment, time freeze. There was so much left unsaid between them, the acknowledgement that they still liked each other so much, the futile wishes of having met in a different place, in different circumstances. Baekhyun wasn’t sure he would meet anyone like Chanyeol again. He wondered if Chanyeol thought the same. 

‘I’m going to miss you a lot, Chanyeol,’ Baekhyun said. It was the only thing that he could say aloud that was also absolutely true. 

‘I’m going to miss you too,’ replied Chanyeol, and for a moment, it seemed like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. 

Then he took a step back and the rest of the patients finished saying their goodbyes, and then the farewell had finished, and everyone that remained in this little world, went back to their usual routines. Chanyeol stayed in the room. 

A nurse came to tell Baekhyun he should go upstairs to pick his suitcase, because his parents would be there in ten minutes. He did, and then he took a last look around. He would never be in that room again. The room where he had slept for three months, a room that had seen him change maybe as much as his old childhood room back at his parent’s house. The room where he had kissed Chanyeol. It hadn’t been a happy moment, but it was still significant. Everything it had meant was a part of his history, and now, he was saying goodbye to that too. 

When he turned around to leave the room, he found Chanyeol at the door. 

‘I always imagined this day differently,’ he said. He had a little smile, but he looked a little sad. He always seemed sad when he saw him lately, but now he also seemed a little nervous. 

‘Me too’ said Baekhyun. His smile was also a little sad. 

‘I used to think… you know, I used to think that when this day came we would still have a nice, appropriate relationship. And I would gather strength to go and ask you for coffee outside,’ Baekhyun gasped. ‘And I spent so much time trying to imagine a way to do it that would be acceptable. That wouldn’t be creepy, and wouldn’t be taking advantage of you and the trust you had developed in me as your nurse. I counted the days. I was so happy when I first learnt they were thinking of discharging you. And then, I fucked up because I liked you so much I was too impatient, and let our relationship became something it shouldn’t have been, at least not here inside; and ended up taking advantage of you in a way I would have never thought myself able of.’ 

Baekhyun was speechless. He was still grabbing the handle of his suitcase tightly. He was leaving this place forever in ten minutes. He didn’t know what to say and at the same time, he wanted to say so many things. 

‘You wanted to see me outside?’ 

‘Yes,’ Chanyeol said. ‘After your first month here, after I got to know you a little better, I’ve thought of you in a way I know I shouldn’t have. At first I tried to avoid those feelings, but later I realized I couldn’t. It’s just that I’ve never met anyone like you, Baekhyun, even if you think you are crazy and flawed. But believe me, I know a lot of sane people outside, and no one is like you.’ 

‘Chanyeol…’ 

‘And then, when I realized I couldn’t fight these feelings, and when I started to suspect that maybe you felt something towards me too, I tried to do it in the right way, if there was such thing as a right way. And then I screwed it up, and I feel so guilty, because I keep thinking that I took advantage of you…’ 

‘Chanyeol, I was the one who played the worst part. Even if you did things wrong, you have to forgive yourself. You are still a good nurse. I can’t stand seeing you punishing yourself.’ 

Chanyeol shook his head. ‘You made things wrong, Baekhyun, I know. But you weren’t in a position of power like I was. I am the one to blame the most. And I still think that I took advantage of you, and I don’t deserve you after what I did. I still think that maybe you just want me because you are emotionally vulnerable right now, and you are used to me taking care of you. I’m still afraid we have met in the worst circumstances, and we haven’t taken good decisions, and it could have never gone right. And I’ve tried to stay away. I thought the only sensible thing to do would be to let all of this fucked up situation behind, and try to forget you after you were gone, but it seems I’m unable to let you go.’ 

A voice called from downstairs. ‘Baekhyun! Your parents are here!’ 

Baekhyun looked at Chanyeol. He felt a knot in his throat. Chanyeol had been thinking of him all this time, as he had been. Chanyeol had dreamed of seeing him outside, and had thought everything was lost, as he had done. And then, after all that had happened, all the things that had gone wrong, all the things he could have lost, he was still telling him this. Because he liked Baekhyun too much, and Baekhyun wanted to scream, because he also liked him too much. 

‘I want to have the chance of going out for that coffee, Chanyeol,’ he said finally, doing his best effort to keep his emotions under control Chanyeol seemed shocked, like he hadn’t really expected Baekhyun to say anything after all. ‘If you still want it, I mean. We haven’t met in a good place, or in a good time, and we’ve both made mistakes. Big mistakes. But I’m finally discharged. I’m finally starting a new life, and everything is going to be different now. And I think we deserve that chance of doing things right. And I want that chance. I want you.’ 

Chanyeol smiled. His smile brightened the room, like a small sun. 

‘Baekhyun! Why are you taking so much time? Your parents want to see you!’ 

They both could hear the nurse on the hallway, approaching the room. 

‘I don’t know if this would work,’ said Chanyeol. He kept smiling nervously, not moving yet. ‘But… I think you’re right. I think this time we can try… I want to try it’ 

‘Me too,’ said Baekhyun. ‘I wanted it even when I thought it was impossible. C’mon, fast! Give me your notepad!’ 

Chanyeol did, and Baekhyun scribbled quickly a number on it, and then, gave it back to Chanyeol. It was terrible handwriting, but it was readable, and Chanyeol smiled. Then, he stepped outside the door, just as the other nurse was about to enter the room. 

‘Baekhyun is almost ready,’ he told her, and suddenly he was again the same Chanyeol full of life he had known when he came to this place, and the other nurse smiled at him like all the staff did. ‘I wanted to help him carry his suitcase, but he doesn’t want me to.’ 

‘C’mon, Baekhyun, let him carry your suitcase. Your parents are waiting downstairs. They are really excited to take you home with them after all these months.’ 

‘I am, too,’ Baekhyun replied. ‘Well, Chanyeol, you can carry my luggage if you still want it so much,’ he added, laughing, and Chanyeol made a pout, but took his suitcase with him. 

His parents were waiting for him in the entryway, and they both hugged him when they saw him. 

‘At last, after all this time you are recovered,’ said his mother. She was smiling, and she seemed younger than the last time he had seen her. He had forgotten how beautiful his mother was when she smiled. ‘Or recovered enough to leave this place, I know, I know that we still have a lot of way to go. But I’m so happy now, to have you with us again.’ 

His father tried to carry Baekhyun’s suitcase to the car, but Chanyeol didn’t let him. He placed it in the trunk, while Baekhyun’s father thanked him, and then, he took a step back and stayed there waved him goodbye while they left. Baekhyun waved back, looking at him through the back window of the car, until Chanyeol went back into the hospital. He had been ready to say goodbye forever to Chanyeol, and now, after all, he was just waving him _see you later_. His smile was so big it almost didn’t fit in his face and his mother smiled at him when he caught sign of his glee through the rear-view mirror. 

So this was happiness, he thought. Coming back home with your parents, knowing in the end, after all the unmet expectations, they still loved you and cared for you. Having projects for the future. Finding love in unexpected places. Life giving you second chances in things you have already gave up; and the road before you, surrounded by trees, and the birds singing, and the sun shining warm. It felt slightly weird after all this time without fully feeling it, like his body was still getting used to the feeling. It felt like opening the windows of an old house for the first time in years and letting the sun enter. ‘So, Baekhyun, are you ready to start this new stage?’ his mother asked, turning in the passenger seat so she could look at Baekhyun’s eyes directly. Her smile was so beautiful. ‘We’ll be all starting out in some ways. Learning to be a different kind of family, and not to repeat the mistakes of the past. We’ll be learning to be a happy family not just on the surface. And I don’t know how good we’ll do at first,’ his father nodded too, in the pilot seat. ‘But I think I’m ready. So how about you, Baekhyun? Are you ready?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, smiling too. ‘I’m ready.’ 

THE END

-x-x-x-

‘So, you don’t think this is boring? Just sitting here in the grass, eating ice cream?’ Chanyeol asked. 

Baekhyun answered by dipping his finger in his ice cream, and smearing it on the tip of Chanyeol’s nose. 

‘I told you it’s perfect, idiot. How many times are you going to ask it, and how many times am I going to have to answer until you are convinced?’ 

Chanyeol laughed. Now that he saw him for the first time outside the hospital, not working, dressed in jeans and t-shirt, and like now, sprawled on the grass, he looked even more like a big, goofy puppy. He looked younger, and cuter than Baekhyun had ever thought he could look. 

‘I just didn’t know if this was good enough for our first date, and especially, for your first date after leaving the hospital,’ Chanyeol replied, trying to get the ice cream out of his nose. ‘But I was too nervous and I couldn’t think of any cool plans, and everybody likes ice cream so…’ he smiled apologetically. ‘I’m glad you don’t think this is too normal and too boring for such a special date.’ 

They were sitting close to each other on the grass, and Baekhyun bumped on Chanyeol slightly with his shoulder. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You know I’ve had more than enough of out of the ordinary experiences. I want the normal and the boring. Especially if it’s with you.’ 

Chanyeol had already finished his ice cream and put his arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders. ‘I’m glad I’m here with you, too, Baek.’ 

Baekhyun smiled at him. ‘Plus, you were right. Everyone likes ice cream.’ 

‘I thought also about going to the movies and then grab some burgers. You can call me an original person. But then I thought I wouldn’t be able to be quiet for two hours in a cinema room, not the first time I saw you. There are so many things I want to ask you about, now, that we are just two normal people having a date. So many things I couldn’t talk about when you still were in the hospital...’ 

‘You still could ask things more freely than me. I still don’t know a lot of things about you, things I wanted to ask all the time, but I knew you wouldn’t answer. I don’t know in which part of the city you live, or if you have siblings, or pets. I remember when you let it slip you were gay I wanted to ask you so many things. Like if your parents knew, and how did they took it…’ 

‘Which one do you want me to answer first?’ Chanyeol asked, bringing Baekhyun closer to him. It was the middle of the afternoon, and it was warm, but it still felt better to be close. Now they could be close without having to feel guilty, and for the first time in his life, Baekhyun could be close to another guy in the middle of the city and feel right about it, because it was just normal, because it was just another part of who he was. ‘I live with two roommates near this area. That’s how I knew this park, and the ice cream place. I have a sister, older than me, and I don’t have pets, because our landlord doesn’t allow us to, but when I was a child I had a ferret,’ Baekhyun burst out laughing. ‘Don’t laugh! It was the most amazing pet ever. I don’t think even your corgi can compete.’ 

‘Well, you don’t Mongryong. He’s the best. And you can’t throw a ball to a ferret.’ 

‘You can, but it would probably hurt it.’ 

Baekhyun snorted. ‘Chanyeol, that was terrible.’ 

‘I know,’ he said, laughing. ‘But you find me cute. Well, about my parents… yes, they know I’m gay. And they were shocked when I told them, but it didn’t cause family drama. But I guess my parents are much more laid-back than yours.’ 

Baekhyun nodded. ‘Yeah. They’ve changed a lot with all of this. With my… suicide attempt, you know, but it’s still difficult for them. This isn’t either the way they were taught a family was.’ 

‘Have you already told them? I know when you left you said they were much more relaxed, but you still didn’t dare telling them all at once’ 

‘Yes…’ 

‘What? That’s amazing!’ Chanyeol said. He seemed super excited. ‘So what did they tell you? Did they take it well?’ 

‘I was going to tell you now,’ said Baekhyun, laughing too. It was nice to see Chanyeol so happy and excited. It made him giddy too when he was with him. Or maybe that was just because he was in love. ‘They… well, they didn’t like it. But it didn’t cause family drama either. Before I never thought this could happen, you know. That they wouldn’t like it but they wouldn’t be mad at me either. That they would… still love me.’ 

‘But it seems we’ve all had changed a lot. My mother started therapy too after I tried to kill myself, and has even convinced my father to accompany her to some of the sessions. And I still have to go to therapy too, and I will be going for a long time. So now in my family everyone goes to the therapist. We are a family of crazy people,’ Baekhyun laughed. He still found it incredible that it was his own family he was talking about. ‘But I’ve never felt so happy at home. And I think my parents are happier too.’ 

‘I’m so glad to hear it, Baek. You deserve it.’ 

‘And you know what my father told me, after I told them I was gay? When I told them it was one of the things that had worried me the most at the time I tried to kill myself?’ Chanyeol shook his head. ‘He looked at me like he was both holding the tears and the urge to call me an idiot. He looked at me like that and asked me how could I have ever thought that between a gay son and a dead soon he would pick the last one.’ 

Baekhyun shook his head. ‘When he says it like that, it looks so stupid. But I was so afraid…. And then about the university too. I’ve told them I want to quit law school. They are disappointed, but they had told me they prefer that that to see their law firm continued at the price of my happiness. And it has been a blow for them. Too many things at once. And still, they are supporting me. To think that I was so afraid, and felt so alone, and all this time, after all, my parents would have loved me anyway.’ 

Baekhyun snuggled against Chanyeol, sighing. Chanyeol kissed the top of his head. 

‘Because you are so lovable, even when you don’t believe it. And I’m sure your parents are good people, even if they sometimes don’t know how to act best,’ Baekhyun nodded. ‘ So, you’re going to quit law school? Definitely?’ 

‘I’m quitting university for now. At this point in my life I can’t do it. I want to go back later, but I don’t think it will be to law school. I don’t know what I’ll do. I never got the chance to ask myself what I really wanted to do, so it’s going to be a challenge to decide that, after I’m ready. But that will be later. Right now I’m just going to therapy, and working on the relationship with my parents, and getting back in touch with the friends I had before all of this started. Going back to create routines I can build my life around. You know, all those things that are completely basic but you forget when you have depression. The rest will come later. Now I just want to focus on the present.’ 

Baekhyun stopped talking, and lifted his head up, to look at Chanyeol. Chanyeol looked at him too, and Baekhyun smiled. ‘And in this very moment, my present is you.’ 

Chanyeol smiled too, and lean over him. When his lips pressed against his they were soft, and warm, and tasted like ice cream, and felt like home. He kissed him back, and after that he kissed him again, and again, because he just couldn’t have enough of Chanyeol, of knowing he was really there with him, after all. Of loving him and knowing he loved him back. Chanyeol hold him tighter, closer. 

This was still the beginning, of his relationship with Chanyeol, and of the rest of his life. And he didn’t know how it would work out, but now he had hope. He would probably fail at a lot of things, but even if he did, now he knew he could always get up and try again. He had already done it. He had survived the winter of his soul, and now he knew that after that, it came the spring. 

They stopped kissing, and he smiled against Chanyeol’s lips, with his eyes still closed. He could feel how Chanyeol smiled too. 

They stayed like that for a while. This is happiness, he thought again. The world being perfect for a second even if it couldn’t stay like that, and that was ok. He was sitting in the grass with the person he loved. It was warm, it was spring, and the air smelled of the summer to come. 

**Author's Note:**

> Mods' Notes: During the duration of BAE2016, we're kindly asking you to leave your reviews on [Livejournal](http://baeconandeggs.livejournal.com/42280.html). Thank you for reading!♥


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